EDMONTON—Alberta’s Ministry of Children’s Services released an action plan Thursday designed to overhaul child interventions in the province, promising to bring an end to a painful history of unnecessarily separating children from their communities and cultures by working to keep more families whole.

The plan, A Stronger, Safer Tomorrow, includes 39 actions to be implemented by 2022 with 16 immediate actions to be executed by April 2019.

“It involves decisive steps to create the child intervention system that Albertans expect, to improve safety, to increase accountability, to strengthen supports for children and youth and to transform how we work with Indigenous families and communities,” said Danielle Larivee, minister of Children’s Services in Lethbridge, Alta., Thursday.

If Human Service Minister Irfan Sabir is not willing to resign over his department’s bungled handling of an internal report into the death of a four-year-old girl, maybe he should resign for his performance the past two days, after the story broke.

The performance included actively avoiding the media, holding an irritatingly vacuous news conference, blaming the previous Progressive Conservative government and forming a bogus all-party investigative panel to distract attention from his performance as minister.

At the heart of the story is Serenity, the little First Nations girl who died while in government-supervised “kinship care” in 2014. The cause of death was a traumatic head injury, but she also suffered from a disturbing list of abuse including hypothermia, catastrophic malnutrition and genital bruising.

Minister Bhullar says inquiry into deaths of kids in government care not needed

Manmeet Bhullar says no enquiry is needed. Manmeet Bhullar, who will take over the portfolio when the newly shuffled cabinet is sworn in next week, said Wednesday December 18 2013 he doesn't see the need to hold an independent public inquiry into the matter, as demanded by all three opposition parties. Great concerns the 33-year-old Bhullar, who is moving from the Service Alberta portfolio, lacks the experience to shepherd Human Services, which handles child and youth issues, social programs and homelessness.

No inquiry means we do not think these children's lives matter, so much so that we can not even be bothered to look into their deaths. There are no words to describe how disgusted I am.

Ontario’s most vulnerable children kept in the shadows

Child welfare system lacks accountability and transparency, with services for vulnerable children described as “fragmented, confused.”

Former youth in care share their stories about their experiences with the CAS, group homes, and foster homes.(JIM RANKIN / TORONTO STAR)By SANDRO CONTENTANewsLAURIE MONSEBRAATENSocial justice reporterJIM RANKINFeature reporterThere is a child in the Ontario government’s care who has changed homes 88 times. He or she is between 10 and 15 years old.